Monday, December 15, 2014

Tim Chatwood Graduate Recital

For my gallery viewing I went to a graduate student in composition, Tim Chatwood,'s graduate recital. He had a few pieces that were just instrumental, but for the most part he had video to accompany his work. For his first piece, Blurred Lines on McCarran, the video was of different streets along the border between Reno and Sparks. Each part of the video accompanied the piece of music very well. For his piece 21 Hit of Improvised Ensemble, he had a folder of 21 pictures and used chance to randomly pick two pictures, then the ensemble below played an improvised piece based around the pictures they were looking at. This was very similar to our visual scores, but it also used the chance aspect. This was not the only instance of improvisation in Tim's recital. Later, his piece An Improvised Outcome, he has a video set up of someone painting and the painter has to make marks depicting the music that was being played. Overall Tim's recital had a mix of music and video that blended well together. His pieces showed influence of John Cage with his use of chance and minimalism. The musicians all performed well and some of Tim Chatwood's pieces from the evening are being showcased at a few composers festivals around the US.